The new Citi Money Gallery is open

Catherine Eagleton, curator, British Museum

The new Citi Money Gallery is now open. Seeing those words in front of my eyes on the computer screen still feels a little strange! Time has flown by, and I can hardly believe that I am writing this last blog post about the redisplay project.

The objects are installed, the graphics and video are up and running, online content is live, and it’s all looking stunning. There’s an amazing moment as a curator when you see the display you’ve been working on for over a year take shape. Even more wonderful is seeing the first visitors in the gallery looking at the objects, reading the labels, and taking photos of what they see. The first reactions have been incredibly positive – and in fact one case is so popular that it’s getting covered with fingerprints already, as people look at it, and point things out to the people they’re visiting with. While this may not be such great news for the people who will now have to clean the glass daily, for me it’s a real source of pride, and a sign that people are really looking closely at the objects on display.

Now, then, all there is left to do is think about what I should wear to the opening event. Well, not quite. The exciting thing about the Citi Money Gallery project is that we will continue to work on the displays in the gallery after opening.

Various sections of the gallery are designed to be flexible, and allow the new stories of money to be displayed in the coming years, and I’ll be handing over to a new gallery curator soon. Working alongside him will be an education specialist who will be developing programmes and using the themes of the gallery to teach topics including financial literacy and numeracy. So, in the coming months you will occasionally hear from my new colleagues about what they are doing.

If you visit the gallery and have ideas for new technologies of money that you think we should look into adding to the gallery in the next few years, do let us know.

The Money Gallery project is supported by Citi and opens in June 2012.